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Comment by pfarnsworth | Hacker News Reader

The money under Bush went to the Iraq war, which benefited the "big guys", not the small guys. The small guys have yet to ever benefit from anything.

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I was referring specifically to the cheap debt. Yes, the much of the spent money under Bush went to the Iraq war, and under Obama much of it went to 'stimulus', and both items hurt us all (through inefficient use of resources) while benefiting large enterprises.

TARP was passed under Bush.

Obama did have the $831 billion ARRA, but that pretty much was done after about two years.

well---now they have plenty of food, medicine, internet, education---sometimes a rising tide can help raise a lot of (but perhaps not all) ships.

> The money under Bush went to the Iraq war,

Not really. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars together cost something on the order of $750 billion, which was less than one year of stimulus spending at the beginning of the current administration.

> Not really. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars together cost something on the order of $750 billion, which was less than one year of stimulus spending at the beginning of the current administration.

Ignore this person. They don't know what they are talking about.

The estimate cost of the Afghan + Iraq War is estimated to be $4-6 trillion when you account for long-term medical care and disability compensation for service members, veterans and families, military replenishment and social and economic costs.

Source: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/articles/bilmes-...

Add another zero to that and you're closer to the real figure, which doesn't even include ongoing expenses like the ramping up of the domestic security apparatus and the surveillance industrial complex created in the wars' wake.

ARRA didn't even crack a trillion.

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